The Precious One (30 page)

Pause. “Oh,” I said.

“Of course, I know that she has a mother.”

Another suppressed smile.
Oh, Wilson
.

“A loving and, in ways, brilliant mother, but Caro has some of the vagaries of the artistic personality and is not, herself, particularly schooled in the ways of the culture at large. So in order to aid my daughter in surviving the world outside this house, first, I sent her to school, and then . . .” Enormous pause, drum roll pause. “I called you.”

“School I get,” I said. “But why me?”

I saw a flash of irritation in Wilson’s eyes, probably at my low-key response after all his buildup, but there was nothing to be done about that.

“Despite your unpromising youth,” he said, “you have turned out rather well. You do not know it, but I have been keeping tabs on you. Your performance in college was excellent; you have no criminal record, not so much as a driving violation; and you are not an addict of any kind. You are physically active and well groomed.”

There was no earthly way to contain my smile, at this; it was all I could do not to hoot with semihysterical laughter, but Wilson didn’t seem to notice.

“While I believe you made a critical error in not attending graduate school—in not getting so much as a master’s degree—you have managed to craft a lucrative and largely respectable career for yourself, and, very wisely, you have remained unmarried, so there is no man in your life to complicate matters.”

“Okay, but surely you have other people in your life, former colleagues, friends who fit the bill, have advanced degrees,
and
no troubled history with you. So why me?”

Wilson shrugged. “I knew you would say yes.”

Of all the things he’d said, this was the zinger, the one that knocked the laughter right out of me. Because it was true: I had always, even when it broke my own heart, said yes to Wilson.

He went on to propose a plan that involved my living in his pool house for roughly the next two years and devoting myself to educating Willow in the ways of the world.

“I assume your job is portable, but if not, I am prepared to compensate you for its loss and any other you might incur. Along with living rent-free, an annual stipend is certainly a good possibility.”

“You’re trying to
buy
me?”

He emitted an extravagant sigh. “That is an ugly and melodramatic way to describe it, Eustacia. I am willing to do what is necessary to secure you as a—what do they call it?—life coach. For Willow, until she goes to college. I am even happy to draw up a formal contract, if you like, making the terms of your employment clear.”

When I didn’t answer, he added, “I am prepared to include health insurance.”

“No.”

His face began to turn red. “No?”

“No.”

“Have you no sense of family obligation? Have you spent your life so jealous of a child that you would refuse to help her?”

Wilson, talking to me about family obligation. Oh, for the love of God.

“I care about Willow,” I told him, evenly. “I will be part of her life in some capacity from here on out, depending on what she wants and what I want. But our relationship will be ours, mine and Willow’s, and we will conduct it on our own terms, as sisters.”

This last word took me by surprise because it was still so new and delicate, like a fern that was just beginning to uncurl. I hadn’t meant to unveil such a precious thing in the presence of Wilson.

“Sisters!” he scoffed.

“And now, if you’ve finished,” I said, “Willow and I have something to tell you.”

WILLOW WAS AMAZING WITH
Wilson, although even that seems not quite fair to say because she so clearly wasn’t manipulating him or handling him. Her honesty shone in every word and gesture. They were just two people being in an authentic, long-standing, years-deep father/daughter relationship, and, from where I stood, that was perhaps the most amazing thing of all. She told him our plan, which was to have a full-blown, all-inclusive, turkey-cranberry-sauce-friends-and-relations Thanksgiving dinner.

She rooted herself firmly, more like a redwood than a willow, and said, “We aren’t asking your permission, exactly, because we know you won’t give it. But I would like it so much if you would not fight this, Daddy, because I want it more than I have ever wanted anything. More than that fancy telescope when I was seven, more than a tree house when I was eight.”

“Tree houses are dangerous. I could not have you falling,” said Wilson.

“Yes, I know. But a dinner with family and friends isn’t dangerous. We have spent so long being just the three of us, and I have loved it. But you opened us up when you invited Taisy, which was a brilliant move and exactly what we needed, and it is not something you can set in motion and then cut off.” She smiled. “Think of Newton.”

“You are turning science into metaphor for your own purposes,” he scolded.

She grinned. “I’m a kid. I’m supposed to be irresponsible. A family set in motion stays in motion, and this one is expanding.”

“Whom do you want in it?” he asked, with a groan.

“Everyone.”

He looked at me. “Your mother.”

“Of course,” I said. “And Marcus.”

“Not Marcus,” said Wilson.

“Daddy,” said Willow, gently. “You’re forgetting that he’s my brother.”

“You wanted him to come, too,” I said, “when you called and invited me. Remember?”

“Only because I knew he would not,” said Wilson. “It was a gesture of goodwill.”

An empty one
, I thought,
meant to manipulate me
. But I kept quiet.

“I don’t know if he’ll come this time,” I said, “but I think he will.”

“He is impertinent and a drunkard,” said Wilson.

“He hasn’t had a drink since his first year of college,” I told him. “As for his being impertinent or not, well, I can’t make any promises.”

Wilson opened his mouth to speak, his face pinking up.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Willow. The girl was plain steely. “He is my brother, and I want him. Brothers and sisters should know each other. They should be in each other’s lives, even if it’s difficult. Taisy says families are messy, but it’s a kind of mess I want.”

She and I exchanged a glance. I had told her about Barbara, not the whole story of the estrangement, of course, since I didn’t actually know it and it was not my story to tell anyway, but I’d told Willow that they had lost touch a long time ago.

“Just like you and I did,” she had said. “We have to invite her.”

“There’s a lot of history there,” I’d told her. “Maybe we should save it for another time. And, anyway, if Wilson knows she’s coming, he might refuse to be part of it.”

“Then, we’ll have to do our best to avoid telling him,” she’d said, coolly.

Now, she said, “I need this. I’ve already spoken to Muddy, and I think she needs it, too. I know it might be unpleasant for you, and I’m sorry. But please don’t fight it.”

Wilson looked from me to Willow. “You are banding together against me.” There was a tinge of wonder to his voice.

“Not against you,” I told him. “This isn’t about defying you.”

“No?” said Wilson, skeptically.

“No,” said Willow, staunchly. “We’re just banding together to make something happen, something good.”

Wilson ran his hands down the lapels of his royal red robe. “I do not give this farcical dinner my blessing,” he said, “and I want nothing to do with the planning of it. Do not consult me about so much as the menu, although I would advise strongly against casseroles. But I will not fight you.”

“Thank you.”

Willow and I said it at exactly the same time.

B
ACK IN MY HOMESCHOOLING
group days, there had been a parent leader named Mrs. Feeley (I am not making that name up) who disdained the words
tell
and
show
and
give
like they were ants at a picnic. Everything under the sun was
share
. We shared—or were encouraged to share—stories, advice, moments, answers, essays, photos, gluten-free-sugar-free cookies, thoughts, feelings, jokes (as in, “I see that smile, Willow; perhaps you’d care to share the joke with the rest of us”), and elaborate doodles we did when we were supposed to be sharing silent fellowship. At the time, her insistence on the word made me want to pelt her with spitballs or cardboard-flavored cookies and shout, “Share
this
, why don’t you? And
this
, and
this
, and
this
!”

But after I’d told Taisy the story of my relationship with Mr. Insley, I was forced to revise my position on the word
share
. Because right afterward, the very second I’d finished telling, that’s just how it felt, not like I’d handed it over to her, but as though we’d said, “One, two, three,” and hoisted the whole sorry tale—and not just the tale but the series of events itself, all those weeks—onto both sets of our shoulders so that—poof!—it wasn’t just mine; it was ours. And, oh, did that make a
difference! Before I left for school the morning after the fire, Taisy had hugged me and whispered in my ear: “The Cleary sisters are here, so never fear!” And I never did.

Still, every day he failed to show up felt like a gift. He wasn’t there that first day, which was Friday, and he wasn’t there the following Monday. By Tuesday, the rumor mill was in full churn, and I’m afraid that I heedlessly set aside my newfound compassion for the human condition in general, and for Mr. Insley’s humanity in particular, and reveled in every word, true or not.

Word was Zany Blainey had taken leave because someone had tried to burn his house down. Word was that a girl at a neighboring school whose uncle’s brother-in-law’s sister was a fire investigator said that Mr. Insley had confessed to doing it himself. Word was he got frustrated with some stupid boat he was building, doused it with wood varnish, and set it on fire. Word was he was drunk at the time. Word was he was so dumb he thought that because the boat was inside a steel shed, the fire would just burn itself out. Word was the entire yard went up like a pile of dry straw. Word was he took such crappy care of his lawn that it basically
was
a pile of dry straw. Word was he was a renter. Word was his landlord was livid. Word was Mr. Insley was at the very least going to have to pay a big, old fine. Word was Webley was getting calls from irate parents about a firebug teaching their kids. Word was the board of directors had come down on that asshole like a ton of bricks. Word was no way was the pyromaniacal piece of shit coming back.

There was no word, not a one, about Willow Cleary having been there the night of the fire, for which I was giddily grateful. Still, a little, nagging voice in my head kept saying that I was a fool if I thought I could put it all behind me quite so easily, especially since another little, nagging voice kept saying that Mr. Insley’s conduct had been, at best, unbecoming a teacher and, at worst, well, I wasn’t even sure (Dastardly? Dangerous? Right on the edge of illegal?) and that it was my duty to do whatever I could to stop him from behaving in such a manner toward someone else. In short, the nagging voice said, it was
my duty to
tell
. But I didn’t want to! Not just yet anyway. I wanted to enjoy these golden, carefree, Insley-free days, which I was sure would end at any moment. So that’s what I told myself: the day I walked into English and found him there was the day I would tackle the issue of whether and who and just exactly how much to tell.

Meanwhile, I hung out—as my peers say—with Luka, not only at lunch, which we persisted in eating under our tree even on the coldest days, but also in the hallways before school and between classes. We walked each other to each other’s lockers. We sat together in English because the substitute didn’t know we had assigned seats. After school, we strolled, shoulder to shoulder, down the path that led to the natatorium where Luka had swim practice, and before I ran off to catch my ride home, we said, “See you tomorrow.”

It was fun and chummy and just as it had always been, except for the moments when I was seized with the urge to blurt out,
If you needed me to, I would carry you on my back across the frozen tundra;
or
You are the funniest and the smartest and the kindest and, good God, look at your teeth!;
or
I could talk to you forever;
or
You are more beautiful than Queen Nefertiti, and, if I could, I would build a pyramid in your honor with my bare hands and every block of it would be another piece of how much I love you
.

Because I did. I loved him. I loved Luka Bailey-Song. Not the idea of him, not the attention he gave me, not the way he had rescued me from loneliness, not the way he made me feel special, even though just having a conversation with him made me feel like the Hope Diamond and a white tiger and Einstein’s theory of relativity rolled into one. I just loved him, the him of him. I wanted him to be happy. I wanted him never to be sad. I wanted him to live forever. I wanted to kiss the exact center of his chest and the crook of his arm and his closed eyelids and his mouth.

And, oh, I wanted him to love me back and had no idea how to make this happen. I wondered if there were a standard method out there that I didn’t know about (since I knew nothing about anything), a social protocol, something I could learn. If only I could have sent him an
invitation: “You are cordially invited to be in love with Willow Cleary. RSVP as soon as is humanly possible. No gifts.”

Instead, one lunch period, when we were sitting under our tree, I said, “I think you should take me to a swim meet.”

Luka gave me an arch look. He was a master of the arch look, particularly the arch look with overtones of waggishness. “You do, huh? Why?”

I shrugged. “I’ve never been to one.”

“You’ve never been to a NASCAR race, either.”

“You don’t know that.”

Luka grinned. “Uh, yeah, I do. So do you want to go to one of those, too?”

“I don’t know what they are,” I said.

“Does that matter? I mean, if never having gone before is enough reason for you to want to go, then why pick a swim meet—correction,
my
swim meet—specifically?”

If I could take one thing only to a deserted island, it would be you
.

I rolled my eyes. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that you want to go to my swim meet because it’s mine.”

“Ha. Circular reasoning much?”

“Nope, you’re not getting off the hook.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Say it: you want to go because you want to go someplace with me, specifically, in order to, specifically, see me, specifically, swim.”

I would carry you in my arms across a burning desert. Just ask
.

“I have seen you swim,” I said.

“You want to go because you want to go someplace with me, specifically, in order to, specifically, see me, specifically, swim
again
.”

“Well, again and faster. Presumably, in a race you’ll swim faster. That’s the idea, right?”

“Say it.”

Be brave, Willow, brave, brave, brave
.

“Fine.”
Brave, brave, brave, brave
. “I want to go with you because you’re specifically you, and when I watched you swim that time, you
were specifically beautiful, and also because I want to see you swim fast. Very fast.” I paused. “Oh and win. Winning isn’t necessary, of course, but it would be good.”

For a second, all Luka did was look at me with the nicest eyes.

“You thought I was beautiful?”

“I’m not saying it again,” I said.

He smiled the kind of smile that is the reason for wars and poetry.

“How about this?” he said. “My next swim meet is right after Thanksgiving. I’ll take you to it, if you take me to Fall Fling next weekend.”

Inside, I was running in circles, waving my arms, and singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” at the top of my lungs.

“Fall Fling is a dance,” I said. “I’ve never danced before. Unless you count ballet, but most people wouldn’t, would they?”

“Nope.”

“I feared as much. And even that was years ago.”

“But even if you had danced before,” said Luka, “it wouldn’t matter. You know why?”

“Why?”

He winked. “Because you haven’t really danced until you’ve danced with me.”

I laughed. “Fine.”

Right then, the lunch bell sounded, and I was only amazed that every bell within a hundred-mile radius of us hadn’t started ringing its pretty little heart out in celebration. We got our things together, stood up, and started walking.

“Next weekend right before Thanksgiving break,” said Luka, “I’ll pick you up at six, and we’ll meet people over at my house for food and pictures. Oh, and invite your parents. That’s what happens: parents come, they say a lot of corny stuff, they get all teary eyed at how grown up we look, they make us pose in all kinds of stupid ways, and they take pictures.”

I didn’t even bother trying to imagine my father saying corny stuff on such an occasion, much less getting teary eyed. I knew he’d never come, but I pushed the thought of him from my head.

“It sounds like fun,” I said.

Luka smiled down at me. “Thanks for inviting me.”

“You’re welcome.”

And then, without slowing down or missing a step, Luka put his arm around my shoulders, squeezed me closer, and kissed the side of my head.

MY MOTHER IS JUST
different from the rest of us. When she isn’t tortured by sleeplessness, she spends most of her days in a state of graceful semi-oblivion, breathing a finer air than everyone else, and seeking out beauty, the kind she can turn into art, the way some missiles seek heat. But every now and then, she startles the heck out of me by taking a sudden and giddy interest in the things of this world. Volkswagen Beetles. Monopoly. Whoopie pies. High-heeled shoes. The amazing career trajectory of J. K. Rowling (whose books, having been written in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, were off-limits to me).

Now, it was the Webley School Fall Fling. When I told Muddy, with no small amount of trepidation, that a boy had asked me to a dance, her face lit up and she squealed (squealed!), “Yay! This is going to be such fun!” That evening, she made a surreptitious run to the drugstore and purchased three teen fashion magazines, and then led me, finger to her lips, to the pool house, where she, Taisy, and I fell on them like ravening wolves. She experimented with hairstyles, tugging and pinning and spraying goops and unguents at my head while I did my homework. She made an appointment for me to get a “mani/pedi,” a term I’d only recently learned from an overheard bathroom conversation at school and that I would’ve sworn I’d go to my grave without ever hearing fall from my mother’s lips. She took me and Taisy on a dress-shopping excursion,
not to our local mall but to the gargantuan one almost an hour away, a trip so long and involved—and, yes, wonderful—that we ended up staying until the place closed.

We were all so caught up, riding the glorious wave of her excitement and our own, that we managed, up until the day before the dance, to avoid the subject of telling my father. When Taisy, finally, reluctantly, broached it, Muddy immediately volunteered, and I was tempted to let her, especially since her very presence had always worked a kind of soothing magic on him, but at the eleventh hour, even as she was beginning to mount the stairs, guilt ambushed me, and I trotted up them ahead of her as fast as I could trot.

When I got to his room, he was sitting at his desk, tapping away at his computer, ruddy faced, nearly hearty, so much like his old self, that, for a second or two, I forgot my dire mission and just rejoiced in the sight of him. He still spent much of the day in his room, coming down mostly just for meals and never leaving the house, but now it was because he was working on a project. He had always disliked talking about his work while it was still in progress (although he was extremely generous in expounding upon it once it was finished), but from the few, over-his-shoulder sneak peeks I’d managed to steal, I was almost positive he was writing the book he’d hired Taisy to write, a kind of travelogue of his intellectual journey.

I stood there in the doorway for a moment, just watching him, before I cleared my throat to announce my arrival.

He heralded me with a swivel of his chair in my direction and a booming “Willow, my girl! Enter, enter!” I took a few steps toward him, halted, and pulled myself straight as a sentry.

“Daddy, if it’s all right with you, I won’t waste time with preliminary small talk. I think this situation calls for plunging in straightaway.”

He waved his hand in the air. “By all means, plunge!”

I gave a brisk nod and said, “Here it is: tomorrow evening, I am
attending a school dance with a fellow student, a young man named Luka Bailey-Song.”

Everything I knew about my father had led me to expect that, at hearing this, he would begin to flush and would then proceed to grow redder and redder as the conversation continued, but to my amazement, the opposite happened: his cheeks got a shade lighter—they could even have been said to
pale
—and, while I couldn’t be sure, I thought his eyes went misty.
Oh, God, what have I done
, I thought. I waited for the other shoe to drop, for him to clutch his heart, fall from his chair. But he didn’t. He said, quietly, “My dear girl, you might be hurt. You know so little of the ways of the world.”

At this tenderness, my own eyes misted over. “I know more than I used to,” I said, with a smile, “but it’s true that I am still rather wet behind the ears. However, I may not know the world, but I know this boy. He is my true friend.”

I did not add that he was my only friend or that I was hopelessly—no,
hopefully
—and eternally in love with him.